Mobile warriors: The best laptops for business

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One of the most frustrating things about attempting to pick a business laptop is that companies often treat “business” as a lowest common denominator. Slow hard drive, terrible screen, bottom-end chip? Call it a “business” laptop and slap a price tag on it! While it’s true that low-end laptops will run Office applications when other functions, like gaming, are out of the question, that doesn’t mean the experience of using these computers is actually good.

We’ve put together a guide to some of the best laptops for business currently on the market that should help you pick the right system and avoid sorting endless mounds of crap. We’ve picked systems that cost less than $1000, include high than 1366×768 displays, offer hybrid hard drives or SSDs, are relatively low weight, and offer extended battery life options.

One thing to be aware of, however, is that you’re going to have to pick and choose which features you want most. It’s not hard to buy a system with all the features we just listed — but you’re not going to get one for under $1000. Laptops that pack all of the above into a single chassis generally sell for $1500 or more — well outside our price range. All of the business laptops we’ve included in this guide address more than one of our stated parameters, but with a particular emphasis on certain capabilities.

One thing you’ll note is that all of the Intel systems are still using Ivy Bridge, not Haswell. Haswell laptops are a bit more available than they were back in August, but are still generally confined to either laptops above the $1000 price point or, in a few cases, laptops that fail to match any of other chosen characteristics.

Battery bonanza: Lenovo’s Thinkpad T440

The Lenovo Thinkpad T430 is a solid system with a trusted brand behind it. This business laptop is built primarily for a long battery life — the nine-cell battery slice gives the system a 30-hour range, according to Lenovo. Kitted out with a 128GB SSD, 4GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, HD Graphics 4000, a 1600×900 14-inch display, and the Core i3 dual-core clocked at 2.5GHz, the system comes to $953.

Alternately, you can add a 16GB mSATA cache drive to the 500GB conventional 5400RPM HDD and buy the rig for $840 — or use that last $110 to bump the CPU or RAM. There’s a few options in our $1000 budget.

Personally I’d go with the SSD if you’re looking for a simple solution. Reinstalling the OS to a system with a hybrid cache drive can mean mucking around with drivers more than is normally required.

As an added bonus, the screen can lie nearly flat. That might seem an odd feature to tout, but if you’ve ever tried to use a laptop while traveling, the seat contortions of various configurations can strain the flexibility of certain hinges. Being able to lay the screen flat can make it easier to read content at times, particularly if you can scroll down with a thumb on the arrow key while crammed into an airplane. Mini DisplayPort, old-style VGA, and a card reader are all integrated.

If you’re willing to step outside the Intel realm, there are interesting options on the AMD front.

Nailing the peripherals: HP Envy 15

Despite having a deeply unfortunate model number, HP’s AMD Envy system packs some compelling features into a price point well below $1000. $740 buys you an AMD A10-5750M CPU, with an integrated 384-core Radeon GPU. The A10-5750M can burst up to 3.5GHz — it’s a quad-core CPU rather than a dual-core with Hyper-Threading — the system packs a 1920×1080 monitor into a 15.6-inch form factor, 8GB of RAM, and a 1TB hybrid hard drive. That’s likely a Seagate Laptop Thin drive, with a combination mechanical platter and integrated NAND flash chip. It’s not as fast as an SSD, but at $740 for a 1920×1080 display, twice the RAM, and substantially better graphics than the Lenovo option, we wanted to note the HP+AMD combo. In this case, not buying Intel enables some really nice options for not a lot more money.

The HP can even be configured with a secondary Radeon 8750M for additional graphics horsepower, if you think you’ll be gaming, which still brings the price to just $810. The disadvantage to this system is the battery life and I/O performance. A hybrid hard drive will be faster than a standard 5400RPM, particularly where boot times are concerned, but it’s not a substitute for NAND. The other tradeoff is going to be in battery power; the AMD rigs just don’t have the low-power capabilities that Intel systems do. But — and this could be important — the AMD systems dual graphics, quad-core + higher clock speed, and 2x the system RAM for less money means you may see higher performance at this price point.

This system offers four USB 3.0 ports (up from two on the Lenovo T430) and HDMI output over mini-DP. The base weights are roughly equivalent at 4.6lbs.

Your moment of Zen: Asus Zenbook

The Asus Zenbook is a balanced approach to the business laptop that packs in a number of our core features and hits a good balance on weight as well. The parts will vary based on the model you pick but in one case you might see a Core i5 chip with 128GB of SSD storage, 8GB of RAM, and a 1920×1080 display in a 2.86lb package. Battery life is going to be more limited than with the Lenovo ThinkPad and its 9-cell battery option — this is just a 4-cell battery — but that’s a tradeoff that may be worth making if you like every other aspect of the system.

Output ports here are good, with two USB 3.0, one micro-HDMI, mini-VGA, an SD card reader, and a combo audio jack. Of all the systems here, the Asus ultrabook is probably the best balance of features — fairly light, with a slower chip, but a nice display, good outputs, and what should be decent battery life.

Conclusions: Horse-trading abounds

The push towards higher resolution displays in tablets has definitely had an impact on the mainstream laptop business. A year ago, the vast majority of manufacturers were strictly offering 1366×768 resolutions on anything but the highest-end machines. Now, 1920×1080 can be had for under $700 on an AMD system, and well under $1000 on multiple Intel systems. Even 1600×900 can be a meaningful step up from 1366×768, depending on initial screen size. That’s a major improvement.

Laptop shopping, unfortunately, remains fairly frustrating with far too many models and not enough ways to sort product categories, but there are good systems available if you’re willing to cut some deals on features.

Personally, if I was choosing for myself, I’d take either the Lenovo ThinkPad T440 or the HP Envy. The ThinkPad is the only option here with a nine-cell battery, and one of the reasons I’d buy a laptop is for guaranteed long run times. I don’t travel enough to be concerned much with the weight, and the HD4000 GPU can’t drive much in the way of gaming, period. A 1920×1080 screen would only exacerbate that problem.

The HP Envy packs a high-end screen with a GPU that can handle it, offers dual graphics for a further performance boost, and can still deliver acceptable performance. It’s not a “gaming laptop,” as such, but I’m certain it can handle enough titles for some traveling.

Hopefully we’ve helped cut down on the frustration of hunting down a business laptop — if you’ve got questions about specific models, feel free to drop them in the thread.

It’s a Clevo notebook; XOTIC PC has the exact same one (Sager N2740?) but a wee bit cheaper.

Ivor O’Connor

I looked for this but could only find the NP2740 and it only has a 14″ screen and starts at about $1000 at XOTIC PC.

Jeremy Garcia

My bad, I thought you linked to the Galago UltraPro, since, for a while, that was the ONLY Haswell laptop Sys76 carried. I believe their laptops are all barebones, but I don’t know the exact model for that one.

Ivor O’Connor

Well you can configure it. The bare bones comes with 500GBs, 4GBs, quad core at $749. The top end is 16GB, duel SSD drives, etc..

this article makes no sense, unless it only intends to market the products the author has chosen, ie another backhander article, (my apologies to the author if im mistaken)

now for the why this article make little sense :

i bought a laptop from a (well known internet auction site) i paid 18 quid for it (that includes shipping)

i know exactly what i was looking for, this laptop was at best 10 over 10 years old, HP omnibook professional, it is built far far better than anything on the market today, it does everything i need it to do, and damn it is FAST, this laptop in its day would cost a user over 4,000 quid, and it still holds up as a quality product even today..

the best things about the laptop is

a) battery life, its lithium ion delivers over 6 hours from full charge, with no power managment (ie all turned off) and i can pop in another battery if i swap out the dvd rom

b) can do everything, (and i mean everything) a new off the shelf laptop can do, probably better as it is not hampered by windows 8 or any other malware bloat

c) it is my main productivity computer, from typing documents, to lightwave 9 (which works surprisingly well, and Dos gaming which i love..

my biggest gripe with all modern laptops, is the lack of 4:3 displays.. widescreen displays make word processing for example less productive as less screen space is allowed for viewing documents..

i hope anyone reading this article and is in the market for a pure business laptop at least spots this comment, just so it sparks the idea of maybe buying a second hand or used machine as this not only saves money but saves perfectly good hardware from the landfill :-)

Sanjay Negi

Lenovo thinkpads are good for business purpose, quality laptops to buy.

Most companies buy Lenovo these days, coz its the cheapest. Not the best, just the cheapest.

Bruce Borkosky

a search on newegg shows a dozen or so laptops <$1000, so IDK why you say they are not available

jim moore

This guy does not know what he is talking about. If he’s going to review only two computers and state that these are the best business computers he needs to do more research. I just bought a Sony model that has a I7 processor (Quad core) with 8 GB of memory (up to 16 GB) 1 TB hybrid hard drive, Radeon 1GB hybrid graphics, 14″ touch screen (1600 x 900 backlit) display, CD/DVD burner all for around $975 New. These specs blow away anything this guy has to offer.

Mo Friedrich

We are not talking about a machine with super cool specs but an office laptop, solid and with a large battery. You know, you don’t require an i7 for word and outlook.

jim moore

Specs are the important thing. If you can get twice the machine that the author mentions then you are that much better off. Business apps are more than checking email and going on outlook.My machine can handle any business operation twice as fast It can alsoand handle gaming much better than either machine the author mentioned. Plus my machine is even smaller and better for travel than both above mentioned machines. The battery is sufficient for a long flight or wait at an airport. Take a better look at the article

Mo Friedrich

I’m in business as an it admin and have experienced many different business laptops over the last few years. Most clients require a faster machine first but never even use 1/8 of the power the machine would be able to deliver. So from my experience especially Lenovo laptops are solid bricks which never break, work in huge temperature ranges and always deliver what you expect. Additionally, the sony machine you mentioned costs about 1600€ normally, clients don’t wait for a special offer most of the time.
Bottom line, I know in creative fields, or CAD you need horsepower. But regular traveling people work with office. They just don’t need 16g ram, or a terabyte space.

jim moore

It sounds like a bad business philosophy. If your business would not take advantage of a good deal then your missing the point. You are wrong about the price that I paid for my machine check Sony’s website they are constantly running specials on their machines. Amazon also has many new Sony PC`s at great prices.It sounds like you should just use a chromebook or better yet an e-machine. Good luck on your future endeavors. Oh yea I’m also in a successful business.

jim moore

This guy does not know what he is talking about. If he’s going to review only two computers and state that these are the best business computers he needs to do more research. I just bought a Sony model that has a I7 processor (Quad core) with 8 GB of memory (up to 16 GB) 1 TB hybrid hard drive, Radeon 1GB hybrid graphics, 14″ touch screen (1600 x 900 backlit) display, CD/DVD burner all for around $975 New. These specs blow away anything this guy has to offer.

Lol I cant believe you have all consumer grade laptops on this list except for the Lenovo Thinkpad T440. The Dell Latitudes are some of the best business laptops along with The Lenovo. You also missed Toshiba and HP business line.